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Ethical 3D printing begins with plastic waste pickers

Pick the right plastic off a refuse tip, then shred, melt and convert it into feedstock for 3D printers – it's a living for some of India's poorest people

By Paul Marks

Modern life is rubbish

(Image: G. M. B. Akash/Panos)

WITH her small child in tow, a young woman trudges across the hazardous clutter of a vast, dusty rubbish dump in Pune, India, scanning for scrap to sell. This scene comes from the launch video of a social enterprise called Protoprint, but it is played out at waste dumps in developing nations across the world. Some 15 million people are thought to scavenge for saleable refuse. Protoprint’s scheme could soon improve the lives of some of these people.

The group’s aim is to train local pickers in Pune to collect high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic waste and then show them how to shred, melt and convert that plastic into the strands of filament that are the feedstock for one of the world’s burgeoning technology industries&colon; 3D printing.

It might sound a small market, but the idea has enough potential that a non-governmental organisation called TechForTrade in London is already establishing an ethics body to ensure it doesn’t lead to exploitation of the waste-pickers by, say, companies or gangs, the group told a conference in Nottingham, UK, last week.

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Video: Waste feeds 3D printers

Protoprint is the brainchild of MIT alumnus and social entrepreneur Sidhant Pai, who is developing the idea alongside SWACH, a Pune-based waste-collection cooperative that strives to get pickers decent prices for scrap. Dealers only pay about 15 cents per kilogram, often leaving people earning less than a dollar a day. “Our waste-pickers will earn 15 to 20 times more for the same amount of plastic,” says Pai.

Pickers will collect the soft plastic bottles used for shampoo, detergents, sauces and medicines and bring them to the Protoprint filament lab near the dump. The plastic is cleaned and then passed through a gadget that Pai’s team has developed called the FlakerBot, which grinds and shreds the plastic into meltable flakes. These are then passed through another device – the RefilBot – which uses a rotating heating mechanism to create HDPE filaments 3 millimetres in diameter.

Local car-parts companies, engineering universities and architectural practices have been lined up as customers for when the venture kicks off later this year.

The recycled filament – which will cost &dollar;13.50 a kilogram as opposed to about &dollar;30 for commercial filament – must be up to industry standards, says William Hoyle, head of TechForTrade, which seeks ways innovation can help people out of poverty. So he has set up the Ethical Filament Foundation to check recycled filament is up to scratch and to ensure pickers are not exploited. The foundation will work with Dutch 3D printer-maker Ultimaker and US design software house Autodesk to ensure standards are met.

Such oversight is a strong idea, says Alexander Pasko, a 3D design specialist at Bournemouth University, UK. “Some filaments just break when you load them up. If they can maintain the quality of the filament and waste-pickers are paid more, everyone benefits.”

If they can maintain the quality of the filament and waste-pickers are paid more, everyone benefits

Hoyle says he is also now preparing to work with groups in Oaxaca, Mexico, and Bogotá, Colombia, on similar projects. “We hope ethical filament will be to 3D printing what Fair Trade is to coffee,” he says.